Washington: Experts have highlighted the growing resistance to antibiotics and other drugs which require global response on the same scale as efforts to address climate change.

They have warned that without an international commitment to tackle the issue, the world faces a future in which simple infections that have been treatable for decades become deadly diseases.

Professor Mark Woolhouse, Director of the Wellcome Trust revealed that the resistance to antibiotics to tackle bacterial infections and antimicrobial drugs used to treat parasites, viruses and fungi is spreading at an alarming rate and the treatment for many infectious diseases is now reliant on just one or two drugs.